


Ways to Worship

by Cousin Shelley (CousinShelley)



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Devotion, Frottage, Kissing, Loyalty, Loyalty Kink - Risking Self For Someone, M/M, Neck Kissing, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Prayer, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:56:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23310502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/pseuds/Cousin%20Shelley
Summary: A demon has changed something between Tomas and Marcus, and Tomas is unwilling to keep silent about it any longer.
Relationships: Marcus Keane/Tomas Ortega
Comments: 6
Kudos: 84
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	Ways to Worship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



Marcus couldn’t shake his thoughts of the last demon they’d battled.

They all got to him, one way or another, but the last one wounded his vulnerable places in ways he usually didn’t allow. The bruises it left stayed tender, always a reminder of how many of its blows had hit their mark. He’d been pummelled without the demon lifting a hand. 

_Azag_. It had named itself with Tomas’ voice after they’d managed to trick it out of a young mother it had possessed. Marcus thanked God they’d found Sarah before she hurt her children, and for the husband who’d been aware enough to know that it wasn’t schizophrenia or some sort of breakdown that turned her skin sallow and her voice hoarse. 

Azag hadn’t done the same to Tomas. He’d almost glowed at first, his skin dewy and flushed as he’d smiled at Marcus. 

“He wants you, you know.” Tomas’ mouth twisted into a sneer, his tongue gliding over his bottom lip. 

Marcus had wielded his crucifix and said the proper words to drive the demon out. He’d tried to block out the wicked smile and the way Tomas’ hands ran down his own chest and stomach in some mockery of attempted seduction. 

“Oh,” the demon had said. “You _do_ know. How delicious. Have you dreamed of it, Marcus Keane? Him crawling into your bed and making you howl?”

Marcus chanted his prayer louder and focused on the crucifix in his hand. He ordered the demon out only to have it chuckle at him, a sound like gravel ground under a boot. 

“Poor priest,” Azag said, less with Tomas’ voice now but the buzzsaw ratchet of its own. “Denying yourself this way. Come _on_.” Tomas motioned to him. “Come here. Get it out of your system, boy. I won’t tell.” 

The leer it aimed at Marcus made his stomach twist. 

With one finger, the demon popped Tomas’ white collar free and let it fall to the floor. It unbuttoned his black shirt, slowly like a strip tease, while Marcus screamed his prayer. It pulled the shirt open and raked the white undershirt up with hooked fingers, then yanked Tomas’ slacks open at the fly and shoved his hand inside. Marcus advanced toward it, his precious crucifix held out like a shield. 

“Stop it!” he screamed. “ _Stop!_ ” He regained his composure and prayed again. 

Tomas laughed, eyes dark and red-rimmed, then he crumpled to the ground, twitching and groaning. Marcus knelt and put a hand on his shoulder, and kept praying. His voice cracked, and his throat went so dry he thought he might choke. After what felt like hours, Tomas gazed up at him, the dark eyes normal again, the ones Marcus had let himself become too familiar with: a deep, rich brown, not the blackened void of a demon. 

Marcus was well aware it wasn’t just his prayers that had banished the demon. Tomas was strong, too. Both of them, together, with God’s grace, had cast it out. Staring into Tomas’ troubled eyes, Marcus was sure he’d been the weakest link in that chain, since he could do little more than tremble and try not to think about the demon’s accusations.

Tomas had stayed awake for two days after that, and on the third day confessed that he feared letting down his guard enough to sleep. He worried that might allow the demon, any demon, to come back in. Exhaustion had eventually won out, and since then Tomas had slept well enough, as long as Marcus was nearby. 

They shared a motel room, and Marcus had taken to sitting on the bed next to Tomas when he tried to sleep, legs stretched out, sketching or reading, answering whatever questions Tomas posed. Sometimes Marcus grumbled about how he asked too many questions, always with affection. He carefully moved to his own bed each night once Tomas was asleep, and struggled to find peace himself. 

Three weeks had passed since that night, the night when the demon convicted Marcus with his own desires, and he still couldn’t shake it. He’d prayed, he’d fasted and prayed, he’d tried to purify his thoughts and move past this. 

Why wouldn’t God let that happen?

Tomas had fallen asleep on the bed next to him and slept soundly, as far as he could tell. One dark eyebrow twitched, perhaps in a dream. He hoped it was a good one and not another one of being tormented by any of the horrors they’d encountered. 

Marcus closed his Bible, his thumb smudged with pencil lead from drawing birds and branches, clouds and things of the air. Lighter things, things that seemed closer to heaven that he did on the ground, weighed down by his own doubts and desires. 

He wanted to stroke his thumb across Tomas’ dark brow, soothe it if he could. 

“I felt so helpless,” he whispered to Tomas. Maybe to God. He blinked back tears. “When I thought I might lose you to it. Please . . . help me to never feel that way again.” 

He stroked Tomas’ eyebrow then with his cleaner thumb and moved to the other bed in the room. 

* * *

It wasn’t a demon who almost took Tomas away from him the next day, but a drunk who didn’t like his looks and didn’t care if Tomas was a priest. He wouldn’t have cared if he’d been Jesus himself. 

They’d gone into a local dive to ask the bartender a few questions about Lonnie Giles, a man who had gone missing. His sister suspected something supernatural at work and had asked them to look into it.

An angry man hugging the bar sneered at Tomas and mumbled something about foreigners. A broken beer bottle and a lot of tough talk later, the guy ended up laid out by another patron of the bar, also drunk, but with enough respect for the Church to intervene. 

Marcus had needed stitches in the fat part of his palm, only five, and a tetanus shot “to be on the safe side,” the doctor had said. 

Marcus sat on the end of his bed, watching Tomas pace back and forth in front of him, the brow he’d wanted to soothe the night before drawn into a deep frown. He rested his bandaged hand on one thigh, and slowly counted the beads on the rosary he’d wrapped around his other hand while waiting for Tomas to say what was on his mind. 

It didn’t take long. He’d always liked that about Tomas. 

“I can’t believe you.” Tomas threw his hands up. “What were you _thinking_?”

“Kept you from getting stabbed, didn’t I? You’re welcome.” Marcus grinned at him, but it didn’t help. 

“By throwing yourself in front of me?” He combed fingers through his thick, dark hair. “If he hadn’t been yanked backward, that bottle could have gone right into your—”

“It _didn’t._ ” Marcus’ hand fared better than his throat probably would have, if the drunk had hit his mark. “Tomas, it didn’t. And it was just instinct. I feel like you want me to apologize for it.”

“No, I just don’t want you to do something like that again.”

“Instinct, like I said.” It had been. But he’d have done anything to not feel helpless, to protect Tomas from harm. “You’d have done the same for me, wouldn’t ya?”

“Yes!” Tomas’ eyes went wide. “Of course, I would have. But that’s—”

“Different?”

“What would I do if something happened to you, Marcus?” Tomas stopped pacing and stood in front of him. 

“You’d keep doing what we do, same as always, but without me.” He swallowed hard and stared down at his bandaged hand because he couldn’t look into Tomas’ eyes any longer. 

“I’m not sure I _could_ do this without you.” Tomas sat heavily next to him, and cradled Marcus’ bandaged hand in his own. “Don’t . . . sacrifice yourself for me. You tried to do it with the demon a few weeks ago, and again today. Don’t. Not ever.”

Marcus pulled his hand free and stood. He’d tried to get Azag to come into him and leave Tomas the moment he’d realized what happened, but he hadn’t been aware until then that Tomas knew it. “I’ll do whatever I have to, Tomas. You can’t ask me to not be what I am.”

Tomas gazed up at him. “We’d gotten the demon out of Sarah. There was no need for you to take it on when it was already inside me.”

Marcus shook his head. “I’m not going to argue about this.”

Tomas stood with a sigh. “I know.” He clasped the back of Marcus’ neck, a gesture that sent a line of heat straight down his body. “I know,” he repeated and pulled Marcus into a hug. 

Marcus wanted to return it, to cling to Tomas, hang on tight and keep him close as long as possible. But he stiffened and patted Tomas’ back, then tried to step away. 

Tomas let his arms drop, and Marcus foolishly thought for a moment he might let the conversation drop, too. Instead, Tomas reached for him but stopped short of touching his arm. “We need to talk about this, Marcus. Since we helped Sarah, you’ve been different.”

He had. But talking about it would only make things worse. “You know how it is. Some of them get under your skin more than others.”

Tomas’ slow blink, the knowing tilt of his head, chilled him. This was going to a place Marcus wasn’t ready to visit. 

“The demon got under your skin, Marcus? Or was it me?”

“Aren’t you tired?” Marcus said, grinning. “Nearly get shanked in a bar and all you want to do is talk? How annoying,” he teased. 

Tomas didn’t smile. Marcus knew that look, and knew he wasn’t letting this go anytime soon. 

“I know what it said to you,” Tomas said. “What it was doing. You’ve been different since. Distant. And I can’t bear it any longer.”

Marcus scoffed, tried to grin and play it off. “Not very damn distant. I sit on your bed every night until you fall asleep, don’t I?”

“Yes, but there’s something that wasn’t there before. You’re uncomfortable around me.”

“No.” But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t the whole truth. _I’m too comfortable around you. That’s the problem._

“Priests shouldn’t lie, Marcus.”

He snorted and thought he could point out that he was an _excommunicated_ priest. But that would only confirm that he wasn’t being honest. Before he could devise a comeback, Tomas continued. 

“We need to clear the air. So we can get beyond this.” Tomas put his hands on his hips and stared at the floor. “What the demon said, about what I wanted—”

“Don’t.”

“It was true.”

There it was. Out in the air where it couldn’t be taken back, couldn’t be swallowed down again. Marcus hung his head and took a deep breath. “ _Tomas_ . . .”

Tomas moved to stand face to face with him. “And what it said about what you wanted?”

 _No_. Marcus snapped his head up to meet Tomas’ gaze, their faces too close. Their faces were _always_ too close. 

“Was that true, as well?” Tomas wiped his hand over his mouth. “You want me, too?”

Marcus sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and waited, measuring the best way to reply. There were so many ways he could deflect, so many things he could say to muddy the issue. But would they ever get past it if he did?

The only reply he could bring himself to say came out in a whisper. “Did you truly need to ask?”

Tomas’ whole body shifted down a notch as if he’d relaxed for the first time since they’d gotten back from the hospital. “Not really.”

Tomas cupped the back of Marcus’ neck and pulled him down into a hungry kiss that weakened Marcus’ knees. His arms went around Tomas, hands twisting in his shirt and pulling him close. 

When Tomas’ thigh pushed between his legs, sense came back to him. Marcus pulled away. “We can’t do this, Tomas.”

“I disagree,” he said so calmly Marcus almost laughed. “We already are doing this. We have been for some time.”

“The demon’s influence may still be affecting you.” As he said it he knew it was a lie. 

“The demon didn’t change me, it only spoke things aloud that I’d kept in silence.”

He cupped Marcus cheek, stroked his fingers down it, traced his jaw so sweetly Marcus had to step away and turn his back to Tomas to keep from falling into his arms. "We need to focus, Tomas. On why we're here."

“We serve God together, in everything. Do you think it would be possible for even a second that we might be distracted from that? Forget why we fight side by side?” Tomas’ hand pressed against the back of his shoulder. "You feel the same thing I do."

_Please stop. Don’t make it so easy._

The priest inside him, the priest he would always be, excommunicated or not, silently begged this. Another part of Marcus, the man, wanted to hear it, to hear confirmed what he’d thought, what he’d hoped, so many times before. 

Tomas’ arms came around him from behind, and warm lips pressed against the side of his neck.

Marcus touched Tomas’ joined hands on his stomach and leaned back against him, tilting his head as Tomas’ lips moved toward his ear. 

“We cannot lose our way, not with this, because we will always look first to God, together.” Tomas pressed a kiss against Marcus’ neck, then his ear. “I will always run toward Him, no matter what. With you.”

He turned Marcus to face him, and this time Marcus was the one who dipped his head for a kiss. He moaned when Tomas stepped close enough their bodies pressed together, knees to chest. 

When he leaned back to breathe, to think, he lifted his bandaged hand to Tomas’ face to let his fingers trace a line from his sideburn to his neck. Were they going to take this step? Could Marcus really have this? 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tomas said softly. 

“Like what?”

“Like you’re already prepared to regret this.”

“I’m not.” He stroked his hand down Tomas’ neck to rest on his shoulder. “I’m trying not to be, anyway.”

“We care for each other after nightmares, after days without sleep. Physically, mentally, spiritually. Why should this type of caring be any different?”

Marcus had no answer besides the ones he might have given before, but they didn’t work now, not in the face of Tomas’ arguments. All his answers would have seemed like something a child might say faced with a monumental question beyond his understanding.

Marcus flinched as Tomas’ hands slipped inside the thin sweater he wore, his palms hot against Marcus’ skin, sliding slowly up with the material to bare Marcus’ stomach and chest. Tomas grabbed the hem and pulled it up and off, then started on the buttons of his own shirt. 

The image was too much like the demon when it had tried to tease and tempt Marcus, so Marcus batted his hands away and worked at the buttons with stiff fingers, the bandage and the rosary wrapped around his other hand slowing him down. Tomas stroked his hands up and down Marcus’ forearms, soothing him like a horse about to bolt. 

Marcus’ gaze met the dark, confident eyes that stared into his. When they’d let Tomas’ shirt fall to the floor, Marcus spread his fingers in the dark hair that covered Tomas’ chest, gasping as Tomas hooked his fingers into the waistband of Marcus’ jeans and pulled him forward into another hungry kiss. 

Tomas opened Marcus’ jeans, every light touch of his fingertips driving him to a new state of arousal, then slipped his hand inside. 

Marcus hissed, a shudder rumbling through him, then followed his lead and unfastened Tomas’ pants. He pushed them down and sighed when he felt the heat of him. Tomas patiently let Marcus touch him, his quick breaths and the way his tongue slipped out to wet his lips giving away his excitement. With the hand still wrapped in a rosary Marcus cupped him, carefully stroked the length of him, watching Tomas’ face, thrilled at how he could make his breath catch. 

God. _God_. He was so beautiful. If it was truly wrong to ache for this man, Marcus was already damned a thousand times over. 

Every part of him only knew _want_ in that moment, and somehow it felt righteous. It felt holy. He lowered himself to his knees the way he might in prayer. 

Tomas’ hand stroked his cheek, his hair, the back of his neck, and urged him forward. He let his tongue support the head of Tomas’ cock, just let it rest there a moment, testing its weight, before pursing his lips and pressing a kiss to the tip. 

Tomas gasped as Marcus took him in, the real act so different from the way he’d imagined it. Tomas pulsed in his mouth, hot and alive and reacting to every movement of Marcus’ lips and tongue, making it so much more an intimate connection than Marcus would have thought possible. 

He took his time, urged to move this way and that by Tomas’ fingers cupping the back of his neck or brushing over his scalp. The pleasant heaviness between his legs grew each time he Tomas gasped or pushed forward for more.

“Marcus,” Tomas hissed, gripping his shoulders to push him gently back. Tomas, his lips wet, nostrils flaring, pulled Marcus up and backed him into the wall. He kissed him, hard and wet and as eager.

Then Tomas dropped to his knees and stared up at Marcus as he pulled his jeans down. Tomas groaned, the sound so wanton it pulled a matching one from Marcus when Tomas mouthed him through his underwear like he couldn’t wait a second longer. 

Marcus gasped and leaned back, sure the wall was the only thing that kept him upright. He pressed his shoulders into it, his hips out at an angle as Tomas’ mouth took him apart. When Tomas shoved his underwear to his thighs and swallowed him down, Marcus had to bite his lip to muffle his shout.

Tomas’ tongue dragged its way up Marcus’ cock, and he gave up biting his lip to stay quiet, no longer self-conscious about any sounds he made. His fingers sank into Tomas’ hair, and almost before he realized what was happening, Tomas gripped his hips and moved him to the bed, barely giving him time to step out of his pants to avoid tripping on the way. 

God, he wanted Tomas. But he hesitated when Tomas, now completely naked, pushed Marcus onto his back and straddled his thighs. 

“Tomas, I—” He interrupted himself with a groan as Tomas sucked hard against his chest. “I don’t know if . . .”

Tomas glanced up at him, his expression unreadable. “Do you want to stop?”

“No.” Marcus laughed, embarrassed at himself. “Please do _not_ stop, I just don’t know if I’m ready for . . . more.”

Tomas’ eyes narrowed a moment, then he said, “For me to be inside you. Or you inside me.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said, feeling foolish at how his face warmed hearing it said aloud, especially when he should have known Tomas would be blunt, as usual. He swallowed hard. “That.”

Tomas smiled tenderly. He dragged his lips across Marcus’ mouth, then kissed him deeply as he pressed Marcus’ hand against the pillow. Tomas slipped a couple of his fingers between the rosary and Marcus’ palm, and they laced their fingers together so that they both held it in their joined hands. He went to press Marcus’ other hand in the same way and stopped to stare at the bandage, as if he’d forgotten about the injury. 

Tomas brought that hand to his mouth and kissed Marcus’ knuckles, staring into his eyes as he did so. Then Tomas pressed against him, rocking slowly, sliding their cocks together. Marcus gasped and arched his body, tossing his head back at the pleasure of it. He wrapped his arm around Tomas’ back, stroking his fingers near his spine.

Tomas pressed his lips against Marcus’ throat, first against his Adam’s apple and then to the side, sucking and nuzzling where his shoulder and neck met. Marcus moaned, his stitched hand throbbing as the numbness began to wear off and he pulled Tomas tighter against him. 

The beads of the rosary dug into his other hand as their joined grip tightened. Tomas sucked a tender spot beneath his ear and rocked against him. Marcus' heart, his gut, his soul, told him that this was okay, this was good. They had stopped him from so many things over the years, had filled him with guilt when he’d done things he should not have, but they _encouraged_ him now. How could he not trust that?

As always, he called out to God for the answer to his question, and Marcus shivered at what felt like a reply in the words of a prayer that rang in his head like a bell echoing in a churchyard. 

“It is not good for the man to be alone,” he whispered. 

Tomas kissed his neck. Marcus’ breath caught when Tomas continued for him: “Let us make him a helper like himself.” 

Marcus’ hips hitched as he pushed against Tomas, his muscles tightening, pleasant ripples spreading and flowing inside him now beyond his control, a wondrous thing taking him over and pushing any lingering doubts from his mind. Why had he ever hesitated? How had he resisted all this time? 

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Tomas gasped into his ear. 

“Yes,” Marcus said, his voice strangled, almost a sob. He pulled Tomas tight against him with his aching hand. 

“Maybe this is worship, Marcus,” Tomas whispered against his neck and squeezed their joined hands hard enough to dig the beads into their palms. “Maybe this is prayer.”

A wave of pleasure crashed through him. Marcus came, his back arching, and his wordless shout _was_ a prayer. It was praise and joy and prayer wrapped into one. 

Tomas rocked against him and froze there, then made a sound against Marcus’ neck he thought might have been his name.

When Tomas lifted his face, the corners of his mouth turned up enough to make him look mischievous. Tomas kissed him as they clung to each other, catching their breath, the rosary still binding their hands. Then Tomas lay his cheek against Marcus’ shoulder, letting himself rest there on top of him, his lips still kissing patterns against Marcus’ throat as their breathing slowed. 

Marcus had so many things he wanted to say, so many things he thought Tomas deserved to hear. He felt washed. He felt baptized and overcome with a sense of rightness he so rarely felt about most things these days. And those feelings didn’t send a wave of guilt that tried to drown him. 

He’d imagined he would feel ashamed. But instead, his soul _sang_. 

No demon could use this against them now. Not if they were together, with God, righteous and unafraid of what they felt. They were stronger now, and the certainty of that brought tears to Marcus’ eyes. 

“Send down your mercy on me and on him,” Marcus whispered against Tomas’ hair, sure God wouldn’t mind the liberty he’d taken to apply the prayer to them. 

“I won’t regret this, Marcus,” Tomas said softly. “I don’t want you to, either.”

“How could I ever regret anything to do with you?” he answered. 

Tomas lifted his head with raised eyebrows. “Seriously?”

They both laughed. “Okay, fair point.” Marcus wiped his bandaged hand down his face. “But this . . . I will never regret this, Tomas. I want you to believe me.”

Tomas stared at him for a few seconds, and Marcus realized Tomas felt everything he did. All the things he’d thought to say were reflected back at him in Tomas’ eyes. 

Tomas lowered his cheek to Marcus’ shoulder again. “I do believe you. I always will.”

Marcus closed his eyes and silently thanked God for bringing Tomas into his life. Nothing more needed to be said. 


End file.
